Thursday, January 13, 2011

Developmental Evolutionary Psychology

There are two articles by Doug Kenrick et al that investigate what they call developmental evolutionary psychology, in 2002 and 2003, that has unfortunately not been developed much more. It seems to be a very important approach, as it provides a clear model for the development of cultural variation from evolutionary psychological foundations. The importance for an evolutionary approach to literary studies should thus be obvious. Certainly it should answer any objection to evolutionary approaches as reductionist. Their approach shows that a variety of strategies can emerge from common foundations.

Further, such feedback mechanisms suggest that developmental approaches such as Clare Graves', who developed Piaget's ideas into adulthood, thus discovering different levels of psychological and even social complexity emerging from those psychological-social interactions, may in fact have some validity. At least, we have a model for such theories. If we were to integrate evolutionary psychology (in the broadest understanding of the term) with the Kenrick, et al paradigm and Gravesean psychology, we might have a very powerful approach to understanding literary development as well as for understanding various characters in literature.